Paracelsus. 
1883.] 
193 
Nature ; but the study of Nature will only be the study of 
himself.” 
Such are the outlines of a system based on that idea of 
correlation between vital and physical forces which fascinated 
the philosophic intellect long before it could be substantiated 
on scientific grounds. We find its foreshadowing in the 
Idealism of Plato. The World, according to him, is a great 
living Being, fashioned by God after the model of the eternal 
Universe of Ideas, and endowed with a soul. In this soul 
all other beings participate, each in his own degree, the 
fullest measure being granted to man. He, indeed, may 
become so noble and so pure as to catch glimpses of those 
immutable Ideas to which his life owes its origin. In these 
Ideas is contained the explanation and inmost essence of 
God, Man, and the World, and to find them is to find the 
only true wisdom. It will be seen that we have here reached 
the central fire of all mysticism, whether of Greece, India, 
or modern Christendom ; but perhaps the fire may kindle 
other lamps than that which glows on the altar of the Mystic. 
We may find a positive basis of scientific faCt for what 
seems at first sight a mere poetic imagination. The details 
are mere metaphors, but the essential content may be a germ 
of pure truth. 
That in studying external Nature we are really studying 
modifications of our own consciousness scarcely requires 
demonstration. Colours and sounds are manufactured by 
eye and ear, or rather by those cerebral centres with which 
eye and ear are in nervous continuity ; and the ideas of 
colour and sound cannot reside elsewhere than in the brain 
which gave birth to the corresponding sensations. But eye, 
ear, and brain are not separate from the so-called “external” 
world. They are constantly exchanging with their environ- 
ment matter for matter, and force for force. They submit 
to the same physical laws which reign over inanimate 
Nature. Gravitation, heat, light, electricity, are all at 
work; the laws of optics or acoustics apply just as much 
to the eye as to the spectacles, to the ear as to the tele- 
phone. Yet more — the essential phenomena of human 
nutrition and development are repeated in all other animals, 
and even in plants. From the lowest much may be learnt 
which holds good of the highest. Take the Amoeba. Is it 
not an exact homologue of the white blood-corpuscle in 
man ? Both are contractile, irritable, automatic. Both can 
feed, breathe, and reproduce their kind. Indeed the relation 
of the blood-corpuscle, or of any other living cell, to man, 
well typifies man’s relation to the Macrocosm. His body is 
